Regarding contribution
Today 3-5-2 is the dominant formation by far, mostly because you can maximize your midfield ratings and get a good attack plus a decent defense at the same time. Even if you choose another formation playing with three inner midfielders is often a good idea if you want to stay competitive.

We want a more diversified use of formations. Creating room for more diversity will increase the tactical and strategic options, which in turn will add a lot to the game. To achieve that and to motivate managers to use other formations, we need to lower the strength of inner midfielders – especially fielding three of them. That’s also what will happen in this upgrade.

In principle it will be equally good to field a sole inner after this upgrade, fielding two will lose some edge and fielding three will lose even more. This principle is also valid for other players in a central position (defenders and forwards), but for them it be will more beneficial to field a sole one than in the past and fielding two will be equally good. Fielding three on the other hand will lose some edge compared to today, but not as much as three inners.

Regarding formations
Changes to formation experience and confusion are included in this upgrade. In essence it will be easier for you to gain and keep formation experience, and it will also play a bigger role when it comes to confusion on the pitch. Moreover:

– You can get formation experience for all possible formations (2-5-3, 5-2-3 and 5-5-0 will be added)
– Extreme formations (more than 3 central defenders/inners/forwards, like 7-3-0 or 4-6-0) will not be possible to use
– 4-4-2 will be treated just as any other formation

Children first
This upgrade will first be released for youth teams later this season. This will allow us a few weeks of testing to make sure the engine works as it should, and at the same time give you some time to try it out.

For senior teams we hope we can release it for the final friendly match this season (a longer test period for senior teams is impossible as we can’t run the upgraded engine and the old one at the same time). If so, it will then also mean that we have to reschedule the World Cup semifinals and final.

That’s it for now. More information will come when the release for the youth teams is approaching.